The nice thing about evolution is that over billions of years, nearly any idea we can come up with has probably been "tried", be it genius or hare-brained (including putting brains in hares).
I remember seeing a program on TV years ago about how giving the hulls of airplanes a rough structure like the skin of a shark reduced their fuel consumption significantly.
So I expect more of these "inventions" to inspire engineers in years and decades to come.
The article talks about how jellyfish create areas of low pressure in front of them to pull them forward. I wonder if top human swimmers can do something similar.
Phelps, for example, has an unusual cadence in his freestyle stroke at the end of the 200IM. He takes two strokes and then pauses for a brief period; its like a polska rhythm. Maybe some part of this is creating a void in front of him. Its visible in this video (around 2:03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cjwuJiwevo)
I was trying to locate a related article, but I got distracted by a nice WebGL demo of swimming jellyfish...nice background or parallel window to have open while reading this article.
I remember seeing a program on TV years ago about how giving the hulls of airplanes a rough structure like the skin of a shark reduced their fuel consumption significantly.
So I expect more of these "inventions" to inspire engineers in years and decades to come.